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The Last RevelationHarvey Kennett

I stood in a blackened caldera, surrounded by strangers.

We were a choir of the dead, assembled by an unseen conductor to sing the last opus of our lives.

The symphony of suffering was like no earthly sound I had ever heard. It possessed a pitch and intensity that brought tears to my eyes. Each song was unique, and identifiable amongst all the others, yet the notes were the same ; the discord of pain.

I looked behind me and blinked in disbelief. A man, no…a boy, some 20 years old at a guess, stood there with his left arm missing. He wore a simple robe, covered in blood from dozens of bullet-holes over his tan dark skin. To my right, an older man, dressed in a black suit, wearing a wide-brimmed black hat, with a long, well-groomed black beard spattered with blood that oozed from a hole near to his heart. To my left, a small, diminutive man in his 50’s, who wore spectacles and an expensive 2-piece suit. He looked like someone’s kindly uncle. Somebody had burned the word “Paedo” across his forehead and blood seeped from his crotch.

I looked down at myself.

My uniform was immaculate, except for the shrapnel tears of the fragmentation grenade that was thrown in to my tent by the young boy. The young boy who stood behind me.

I remember everything going dark, before I found myself here.

The song ended, and the caldera stood silent. There must have been over 10,000 of us stood in that huge basin.

Suddenly, three figures descended from the darkness above us, and cast a brilliant illumination upon the assembled throng. I turned my eyes to the ground, but saw in my peripheral vision that they were borne by wings of brilliant white feathers.

From the corner of my eyes, I noticed that they hovered over 3 separate people, who rose unaided in to the sky, whereupon their hands were taken by the beings of light, who then ascended in to the darkness.

Silence befell the caledera once again, edged with a sense of nervousness.

We waited.

And then they came.

Pouring over the lip of the caldera in a tide of obliteration.

Some were scaly, others had fur, but all had fangs and talons. Our personal demons had arrived.

I looked at mine. It stood some 7 feet tall, and had rubbery, sinewy brown skin, covered with gangrenous weeping sores. Its hideous torso was covered in a multitude of spiked growths, which culminated in a ridge of spikes down its spine. The head was shaped like a hyena, and it looked at me with a mocking, leering sneer as black drool dripped from its gaping maw.

I felt powerless to move, and all around me I heard the carnage of frenzied consumption as the fiends devoured the other strangers.

I looked in to its’ eyes, and saw never-ending death.

**************************************
“Where are we going?”, said the young girl.

The Bringer of Eternal Life looked down at the innocent child as they climbed higher through the darkness, in a sphere of comforting light and warmth that travelled with them.

“To Beyond”, he said, in a voice filled with love and hope.

“What about all those other people ?”, girl asked.

“They have been judged, and found wanting”, the being replied, his voice tinged with sadness.

“What did they do ?”, asked the little girl.

“They took another’s life”, the man said. “No being which voluntarily kills another may enter Beyond. It is forbidden.”

“Do they go to Hell ?”, the girl inquired.

“In a manner of speaking, yes”, the being replied, before continuing, “They return to Earth as the complete opposite to that which they despised.”

“Why’s that?”, the girl asked.

“I believe you call it irony. We see it as a chance to see the opinion of the other side. Those that kill return to Earth”, he replied.

The girl pondered for a moment then asked a question.

“Is that why the World is a more dangerous place and gets worse every day ?”

“Yes….far more return to your world than enter Beyond, so it would hold true that indeed, danger increases exponentially with the numbers that return. Particularly after a World War”, the being replied.

“But surely that’s unfair to those who remain? Their lives are even more dangerous”, the girl concluded.

“Yes, but we are constantly working out new ways for the innocent and worthy to transcend. When you heard that your father had been killed by a grenade thrown in to his tent you ran out in to the street and were knocked down by a bus, didn’t you?”, the man said.

“Oh”, said the girl, and she fell silent as they reached an immense city that hovered in the clouds.

“Perhaps he will join you one day”, the man said, adding “He is being born again as we speak. His beliefs will shape him, for good or bad, one way or another. Only he can unlock the doors to Beyond.”

“But what about religion? Surely that will affect him one way or another?” asked the girl.

“Indeed it will”, the man replied, adding “But man invented religion. We did not. Man is his own jailer, for he has the key to eternal happiness or infinite suffering. Many claim to be the only path, but this is your greatest incarceration. There is no path to eternal life, except for life itself. We are not the path, merely the final destination.”

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"This was absolutely brilliant! I would love to see this expanded into a longer novel. Any chance this might happen?" -- Luis Felips Moura.